Executive guide to success with Real-Time Customer Data Platform
As a marketing leader, you’ve placed your trust in Adobe’s Real-Time Customer Data Platform (Real-Time CDP). Whether you’re leaning on new types of data or focusing on new channels that reach durable identifiers, you’ll find resources to help you start strong in your journey with Real-Time CDP.
While your team is hard at work customizing Real-Time CDP to strengthen your marketing strategy, you can help them succeed by giving guidance and support. This guide was created to help you do just that.
Let’s get started.
Share Your Vision
As a leader, you are responsible for setting and driving the Real-Time CDP implementation and activation strategy. To ensure a successful product rollout and ongoing success, you will need to share your vision for success with stakeholders.
Within your organization, speak to your team about how customer profile activation fits into your overall marketing and personalization strategy. Highlight the importance of unifying the audience profile and the impact it has on all teams responsible for the customer experience.
When people understand your goals and objectives for Real-Time CDP, it ensures a shared understanding about how Real-Time CDP supports your overall digital strategy and is key to the organization’s success.
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ACTION: Develop a problem statement that highlights the customer profile limitations that exist within your org today and how you plan to leverage Real-Time CDP to close those gaps in audience management.
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Assemble the Team
Successful Real-Time CDP teams have several key members.
A product owner. They oversee the day-to-day operations of Real-Time CDP. They help the organization take full advantage of Real-Time CDP’s features.
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ACTION: Select one of your employees or hire a seasoned product owner to take on the role full-time. If they aren’t an expert, ensure they are enrolled in Adobe’s Digital Learning Services for Real-Time CDP courses.
Resource: Real-Time CDP Tutorials and Course guides on Experience League
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A Project Manager. They manage large-scale implementation work related to Adobe solutions, working with internal teams (e.g. business owners, product management, IT, operations) and external teams (e.g. Adobe, agencies, partners). This includes overseeing the collection and documentation of technical and business requirements from key stakeholders.
Marketing, analytics, and advertising business owners. They’re the primary users of Real-Time CDP. They drive initiatives and campaigns using Real-Time CDP. They’ll report on what is and isn’t working to optimize processes and results.
A data steward. They’re the privacy expert on the team. Most Real-Time CDP implementations include personally identifiable information (PII). You need a data steward to make sure all Real-Time CDP work (including implementation, data collection, and activation) complies with company and industry privacy regulations. They define the data governance framework, including how data is used.
IT and data engineering leaders. These are people like enterprise architects, data engineers, and data science engineers. They are the technical owners of all Real-Time CDP implementation and integration activities. They do work the marketing, analytics, and advertising subject matter experts can’t do. If you’re new to Adobe Experience Platform, implementing Real-Time CDP will probably be more complex than other Adobe Experience Cloud solutions you’ve used. You’ll need these team members to implement and maintain Real-Time CDP.
Keys to Your Success
Now that you’ve assembled the core team and established a COE, let’s talk about what else you can do to keep them on track as they stand up Real-Time CDP. In our experience, the most successful teams do these three things at the start:
1. Set initial goals. Prioritize use cases and start with existing data and integrations you have available today. Set a reasonable timeline for value realization and getting to CDP adoption at scale. Understand what goals your organization is trying to achieve and evolve your Audience Center of Excellence with that in mind.
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ACTION: Finalize a clear list of use cases, as well as a timeline to execute based on current capabilities.
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2. Test then scale. Start with a targeted activity to build momentum with quick wins. Test how different organizations within the company use Real-Time CDP and iterate accordingly. Once you’ve demonstrated value, deploy across the organization to fully realize Real-Time CDP’s value.
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ACTION: Document this Real-Time CDP activity quick win and leverage it as a framework for success that can then be adopted by others within your org and unlock your ability to scale
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3. Measure success. It can be difficult to gauge the success of a new technology platform without building in checkpoints and measuring success along the way. Ensure the team builds KPI tracking and optimization into all Real-Time CDP activities. Document successful projects and campaigns and share them across the organization. Call out the exact metrics of wins. After a project or campaign is complete, analyze what worked and what didn’t. Use these insights to optimize future projects.
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ACTION: Establish a culture of measuring success by establishing monthly or quarterly review meetings
with your team to celebrate wins and identify opportunities for improvement.
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Emphasize Operational Excellence
Create a Center of Excellence (COE) to better manage and govern Real-Time CDP usage for your organization. The COE supports strategic initiatives, promotes efficiency, drives best practices, and looks across business units for growth opportunities. Business units may share execution responsibility in the COE.
A COE facilitates the usage of the data platform so that you can maximize your technology investment.
A strong COE:
- Governs the use of the platform
- Builds an organizational roadmap
- Tracks progress
- Measures results
- Communicates across the organization
We have four tips on how to run an effective COE.
- Create a steering committee to oversee Real-Time CDP. The core team manages the day-to-day activities of the COE. Stakeholders define use cases and set strategy for the core team. The steering committee provides budget and project sign off. The steering committee should include all key team members (exec sponsor, product owner, data steward) as well as leaders from core stakeholder groups (marketing, analytics, advertising, IT/data engineering)
- Make a plan every month. Have the marketing teams meet with other key stakeholders every month to discuss results and learnings, as well as plan or maintain the marketing roadmap.
- Commit to an IT roadmap. Make sure the data and technology teams work on enhancements for the next round of marketing activities. Don’t forget to include monitoring and maintenance of existing features.
- Review every quarter. Bring teams together to align roadmaps. Split time between lessons learned, campaign results, and reviewing the marketing roadmap and IT dependencies for the next quarter.
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ACTION: Establish a COE within 1-2 weeks of completion of your implementation. Set up a regular cadence for the steering committee and provide input on roadmaps, goals, and priorities for the next period.
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Your Role in Success
One of the keys to getting the most value out of your Adobe investment lies with setting up a common technical and organizational foundation. Ensuring that all parts of the organization operate with a common strategy and purpose is crucial for success.
We also understand that leading through change can be daunting for transformational leaders. The journey involves several critical steps: communicating your vision, gaining buy-in, enabling people on new technologies, and instilling new ways of working.
For more detailed guidance on managing the human aspects of change, refer to our guide on Change Management essentials for success. This resource offers valuable insights, practical strategies and even a change toolkit to help you understand the scope and complexities of organizational transformation.